It was considered a great
privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your
parents?

They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed.
. ...and they did? When a 55 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise,
peel out, lay rubber or watch submarine races, and people went steady?

No one ever asked where the car keys were because they
were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never
locked?

Lying on your back in the grass with your friends
and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ..."and playing
baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?

Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals
because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

And
with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip
back in time and savor the slower pace,and share it with the children
of today? When being sent to the principal's office
was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?
Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of
drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc. Our parents and
grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because
their love was greater than the threat. Send this on to someone who can still remember Nancy
Drew, the Hardy Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Howdy Doody and the Peanut
Gallery, the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Bell, Roy and
Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.

As well as summers filled with
bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the
pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar. Didn't that feel
good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?

I am sharing this
with you today because it ended with a double dog dare to pass
it on. To remember what a double dog dare is, read on. And
remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know
better and too young to care.

Penny candy 35 cent a gallon
gasoline Jiffy Pop popcorn Do you remember a
time when...Decisions were made
by going "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"? Mistakes were corrected by simply
exclaiming, "Do Over!"? "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the
fastest? Catching the fireflies could happily occupy an entire
evening? It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?

The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was
"cooties"? Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a
slingshot? A foot of snow was a dream come true? Saturday morning
cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
"Oly-oly-oxen-free" made perfect sense? Spinning around, getting
dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles? The worst
embarrassment was being picked last for a team? War was a card game?
Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin? Water
balloons were the ultimate weapon? If you can remember most or all of these,
then you have lived!!!!!!!